Dignity Promotion?

Obama has proudly backed policies that have struck at the dignity of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, and he has proudly backed policies that contribute to the “climate of fear” that helps empower what his then-advisor described as “the baddies.” (Seriously, “the baddies”? Who talks like this?) This is the candidate who offers a change of direction in foreign policy? Really?

So Daniel wants to know. I enjoy seeing the Obama team taken to task for suggesting a Presidential focus on "dignity promotion" would occupy key energies of an Obama administration, partially because I don't know what is meant by dignity and what is meant by promotion but mainly because I am tired of promotions and prefer that politicians, and people generally, either actually do something (instead of meta-do it) or actually not do it. If a President Obama would be dignified, I'm all for that, but how passe it all seems, eh? Raising dignity awareness. That's the ticket.

Anyway, as fun as Daniel's takedown is to read, it does work with an at least implicit concept of dignity. Now I welcome a discussion about what dignity really is, not because I expect a postmodern triumph in our failure ever to define dignity, but because I suspect when we do succeed in defining it we will wind up realizing that it requires us as often not to act in situations where dignity-promoters always see an incentive or a duty to get involved in the lives of others. But the world is not neatly divided into segregated populations of the dignified and the undignified. If we're not dedicated to pacifism, we have to recognize the at least occasional necessity of at least two possibilities:

(a) innocent people with dignity may be attacked, disrupted, and killed in war; and
(b) culpable people with dignity may  "                 "             "                 "     .

Daniel's point is that Obama appears to recognize (a), at least in Lebanon, while purporting to "change the mindset" that results in, among other evils, (a). Even if I concede that this is a bad unnecessary contradiction (it might sometimes be necessary), we are left with the problem of (b) + (a), namely, that Hezbollah fighters, an uncowardly lot and probably many with families and communities to defend, nonetheless deliberately set up battle positions in residential areas and generally tried their best to mix up the "baddies" (i.e., legitimate targets of war) with the "goodies" (i.e., illegitimate targets of war). I'm not one to go around fighting Israel's battles, but this is a problem of war that transcends the particulars of that summer campaign. So I suppose I'm less concerned about Obama's support for that mess of a war than the dignity-promotion principle -- which, in a judgment I share with Daniel, remains a cipher at best.

Probably in another shared judgment, I'd say that the best way to 'promote' dignity is indeed by being dignified -- which, in America's case, does involve backing away from a career of armed intervention in parts of the world famous for most thoroughly mixing up goodies and baddies.

Comments

[Roach]

I like your blog, but let me ask you this: Do you think the following is a well-constructed sentence?

"I enjoy seeing the Obama team taken to task for suggesting a Presidential focus on "dignity promotion" would occupy key energies of an Obama administration, partially because I don't know what is meant by dignity and what is meant by promotion but mainly because I am tired of promotions and prefer that politicians, and people generally, either actually do something (instead of meta-do it) or actually not do it."

[Joules]

"Seriously, “the baddies”? Who talks like this?"

Authors of children's books and President Bush. (I have to admit I do, too, occasionally.)

Roach, maybe you'd like the t-shirt I found: "I am the grammarian about whom your mother warned you." It's for sale in "Signals", the public television catalog.

[mokk]

I think you miss the point of Obama's politics. It's not some weird form of self-esteem work. And it's not a way of pushing yourself further into some murky mess. It's community organizing, where you give people the tools to do their own work. Domestic security though health security, education, and (if things go well) representative democracy. When people don't feel like shit about themselves, they are less likely to be terrorists.

The Hezbollah example is telling. You know why people support them? Because they hand out COLD HARD CASH after missile attacks. Lost your things? Here's some cash. Need to move? Here's some cash. No accounting, just gratitude. And, sadly, it works.

What I don't get is how a profoundly conservative idea ("help the locals to help themselves") so utterly terrifies conservatives. What's up with that? Why not help at a municipal level, rather than fight wars? I just don't get it.